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Well, folks, I missed having Hurricane Gerda blow me off Cape Cod, but I sure did not escape the rain.

As the caretaker’s helper on a private estate in the Catskill Mountains in the summer of 1964, I was staying in the loft of a combination barn and garage, right under the wooden shingles of a roof with no insulation or finished ceiling. The shingles spent the night dancing under the consistent pelting of pouring rain. The babbling brook of Clear Creek became a roar.

The next day Stan and I got in the Scout and headed out to see what rambunctious Clear Creek had been up to. We only had to go about 500 yards.

The structure had not been much more than a wide sluice box, more of a pass-through spillway than a structure of any height — just enough of a weir to divert some of the creek’s water under the road and through several small ponds meandering through the estate’s main compound of buildings. Even so, the dam had been substantially made, with heavy beams framing it and thick timbers for the creek to run over. The morning after Hurricane Gerda, it was largely a jumble of boards strewn down the stream.

Within the week Stan and I and a craftsman Stan knew were fixing what could be fixed, securing the beams that needed secured, and laying salvaged and new timbers across the raceway. Sturdy spikes, some eight to ten inches long, had been purchased to secure it all together. Stan and his craftsman were glad to have a hired hand to sledge the big nails through the boards.

When I was fourteen my Dad quit letting me drive nails in the cabin he was building because every nail I started was bent by half way in. To this day, be it a three-penny or a brad, if it is in my hand and I have a hammer, it is going to end up bent.

Yet, with these sturdy spikes and being all of twenty-four, I thought I had finally found nails substantial enough to withstand my influence.

Nope! After five or six spikes were beyond recognition, Stan mentioned those things cost 80 cents each. After a dozen he started commenting how far it was to the hardware store to get more. By the fifteenth, Stan and the handyman had taken over and I was left trying to look helpful.

It is amazing to me, but I remember only two tiny snippets of hitchhiking back from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, to the Catskill Mountains of New York.

One snippet is Boston.

My main rule in hitchhiking was to avoid big towns and cities. I didn’t like trying to catch rides in traffic and for the most part had no interest in witnessing how one big city handled tying streets together versus how another did the same thing. But Boston was different. Boston is so tied to the history of the United States I wanted to get the feel of the town. And, having been a Unitarian Universalist since high school, I wanted to check out the first church (founded 1620) in the English American colonies. Yep. It’s Unitarian.

How did I make it into and out of that city without remembering a ride or standing on a corner with my thumb out or any other detail of dealing with a world capitol? How did I spend two nights there without remembering one bed or couch or beer or bar? (The only way I know it was two nights is from reading it in a letter a friend saved.) All I remember is a view of the lawns and trees of Boston Commons rolling off to the north west, filled with students studying and chatting. And looking at First Church from the outside. I don’t even remember if I tried the door to see if it was open

Having left Boston, I do remember it beginning to rain as I crossed the Hudson River from Massachusetts to New York. And raining harder as I got closer to Oliveria Road, the tiny mountain meander that passed over the Catskills and wound down Frost Valley. I don’t remember the ride (or was it rides?) over the mountains, but I remember the rain coming down harder. And when I got to the Frost Valley estate I had spent the summer on and let Stan the caretaker know I was back, he told me a hurricane had hit Cape Cod and the rains were headed our way.

For not remembering much about my return, I distinctly remember my disappointment at having missed the opportunity to go through a hurricane. Had I known Gerda was on the way I would have stayed on the Cape for the 5.6 inches of rain.